The beautiful site the Romans called Vindolanda lies in south-west Northumberland, in the district of Tynedale, more or less half way between the North Sea east of Newcastle and the Irish Sea to the west of Carlisle. It is just within the boundary of the Northumberland National Park, and is a part of the World Heritage Site of Hadrian's Wall. The Wall itself was built on the whinstone ridge a mile to the north, with the fort of Housesteads two miles to the north-east, and that of Great Che...

One of the most controversial of all works to survive from ancient Rome, the Augustan History is our main source of information about the Roman emperors from 117 to 284 AD. Written in the late fourth century by an anonymous author, it is an enigmatic combination of truth, invention and humour. This volume contains the first half of the History, and includes biographies of every emperor from Hadrian to Heliogabalus - among them the godlike Marcus Antonius and his grotesquely corrupt son Com...

In this, the only biography of Septimius Severus in English, Anthony R. Birley explors how 'Roman' or otherwise this man was and examines his remarkable background and career. Severus was descended from Phoenician settlers in Tripolitania, and his reign, AD 193-211, represents a key point in Roman history. Birley explores what was African and what was Roman in Septimius' background, given that he came from an African city. He asks whether Septimius was a 'typical cosmopolitan bureaucrat', ...

The book is a defense of the flat earth theory, which asserts that the earth is not a globe but rather a flat disk.Rowbotham's book presents a range of arguments and evidence in support of the flat earth theory. He argues that the curvature of the earth cannot be observed, and that the earth appears to be flat when viewed from a distance. He also contends that the existence of gravity can be explained without invoking the concept of a spherical earth.The book was written during a time when...

To the various critics who reviewed unfavourably the first edition of this work, and to those also who wrote and published replies to it, my thanks are due and now respectfully tendered. They pointed out several matters which, on proper examination, were not, as evidence, entirely satisfactory; and as my object is to discover and hold to that only which is true beyond doubt, I have omitted them in the present edition. The true business of a critic is to compare what he reads with known and...

`Long may the barbarians continue, I pray, if not to love us, at least to hate one another.' Cornelius Tacitus, Rome's greatest historian and the last great writer of classical Latin prose, produced his first two books in AD 98. He was inspired to take up his pen when the assassination of Domitian ended `fifteen years of enforced silence'. The first products were brief: the biography of his late father-in-law Julius Agricola and an account of Rome's most dangerous enemies,...

Zetetic Astronomy: The Earth Not a Globe or simply Earth Not a Globe is a pamplet written in 1881 by Samuel Rowbotham, under the pseudonym "Parallax". It is the basis for most the flat earth theories supported by the Flat Earth Society.Samuel Birley Rowbotham (AKA Parallax) (1816 – 1884), was an English medical doctor and inventor who wrote Zetetic Astronomy: Earth Not a Globe, based on his decades-long scientific studies of the earth.The flat Earth model is an archaic conc...

There were vultures circling above us and I was told to keep moving in case they thought I was dead... Travels with a Brompton is a sparkling narrative about the adventures of an English couple and their folding bicycles over nearly 30 years of exploring France. This is a wine-fuelled account of sweaty pedalling and hard-earned freewheeling via cols, war memorials, lavender fields, and vineyards. It is a travel guide for those who long for two-wheeled trips in France and a lively read for ...

Hadrian's reign (AD 117-138) was a watershed in the history of the Roman Empire. Hadrian abandoned his predecessor Trajan's eastern conquests - Mesopotamia and Armenia - trimmed down the lands beyond the lower Danube, and constructed new demarcation lines in Germany, North Africa, and most famously Hadrian's Wall in Britain, to delimit the empire.The emperor Hadrian, a strange and baffling figure to his contemporaries, had a many-sided personality. Insatiably ambitious, and a passio...

Zetetic Astronomy: Earth Not a Globe is a thought-provoking anthology that delves into the intriguing exploration of celestial phenomena through a flat Earth perspective. This collection, centered on the theme of questioning conventional astronomical wisdom, showcases a variety of literary styles ranging from polemical essays to detailed scientific expositions. The works within this anthology challenge the established heliocentric model, presenting an array of arguments and observations th...

`Long may the barbarians continue, I pray, if not to love us, at least to hate one another.' Cornelius Tacitus, Rome's greatest historian and the last great writer of classical Latin prose, produced his first two books in AD 98. He was inspired to take up his pen when the assassination of Domitian ended `fifteen years of enforced silence'. The first products were brief: the biography of his late father-in-law Julius Agricola and an account of Rome's most dangerous enemies,...

Marcus Aurelius, the philosopher-emperor who ruled the Roman Empire between AD 161 and 180, is one of the best recorded individuals from antiquity. Even his face became more than usually familiar: the imperial coinage displayed his portrait for over 40 years, from the clean-shaven young heir of Antonius to the war-weary, heavily bearded ruler who died at his post in his late fifties.His correspondence with his tutor Fronto, and even more the private notebook he kept for his last ten...